Kiss Me While I sleep (18 page)

“No, of course not; every call going in or out of there is logged and perhaps recorded. I have a private number for our Interpol contact, Georges Blanc, and he contacts the CIA or FBI through normal channels.”

“Have you thought of asking Blanc to get the mobile phone number of the person the CIA has sent to track Mansfield? The CIA doesn’t do this itself; it hires others to do the work, am I correct? I’m certain he or she would have a mobile, everyone does. Perhaps this person would be interested in making a considerable sum of money in addition to what the CIA pays, if certain information comes our way first.”

Intrigued by the idea, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it himself, Rodrigo stared at his brother in admiration. “Fresh eyes,” he murmured to himself. And Damone was a Nervi; some things were inborn. “You have a devious mind,” he said, and laughed. “Between the two of us, this woman has no chance.”

Frank Vinay always rose early, before dawn. Since the death of his wife, Dodie, fifteen years before, it had been increasingly difficult for him to find reasons
not
to work. He still missed her, dreadfully at times; at other times it felt more like a distant ache, as if something in his life wasn’t quite right. He’d never considered remarrying, because he thought it would be grossly unfair to a woman to marry her when he still loved his dead wife with all his heart and soul.

He wasn’t alone, anyway; he had Raiser for company. The big German shepherd’s chosen sleeping place was in a corner of the kitchen-maybe the kitchen felt like home to him, since that was where he’d been kept as a puppy until he became accustomed to his new surroundings-and he rose from his bed, tail wagging, as soon as he heard Frank’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

Frank entered the kitchen and rubbed Raiser behind the ears, murmuring silly things that he felt safe in saying because Raiser never betrayed a secret He gave the dog a treat, checked the water in the bowl, then switched on the coffeepot that Bridget, his housekeeper, had prepared the evening before. Frank himself had no domestic skills at all; it was a complete mystery to him how he could take water, coffee, and filter and concoct an undrinkable brew, while Bridget could use the same components to make a pot of coffee that was so good it almost made him weep. He’d watched her do it, tried to do the same things, and ended up with sludge. Accepting that any further efforts of his to make coffee would fit the definition of insanity, Frank had acknowledged defeat and saved himself from further humiliation.

Dodie had made things easy for him, and he still followed her guidelines. All his socks were black, so he wouldn’t have to worry about matching them. All his suits were neutral in color, his shirts either white or blue so they’d go with any suit, and his ties were likewise of the mix-and-match variety. He could pull out any item of clothing and be assured that it would go with anything else in his closet. He’d never win any awards for style, but at least he wouldn’t embarrass himself.

He’d tried to vacuum the house… once. He still wasn’t certain how he’d managed to explode the vacuum cleaner.

All in all, it was best to leave the domestic front to Bridget, while he concentrated on paperwork. That was what he did now, paperwork. He read, he digested facts, he gave his learned opinion-which was another phrase for “best guess”-to the director, who then gave it to the president, and he made decisions about operations based on what he’d read.

While the coffee was brewing, he turned off the outside security lights and let Raiser out into the backyard to do a perimeter patrol and also take care of nature’s call. Raiser was getting old, Frank realized as he watched his pet, but then so was he. Maybe both of them should think about retiring, so that Frank could read something besides intelligence reports and Raiser could give up his guard duties and just be a companion.

Frank had been thinking about retiring for several years now. The only thing that held him back was the fact that John Medina wasn’t ready to come in from the field, and Frank couldn’t think of anyone else he wanted to see fill his shoes. Not that the position was his to bestow, but his choice would carry a lot of weight when the decision was made.

Maybe soon, Frank thought. Niema, John’s wife of the past two years, had commented rather testily to Frank that she wanted to get pregnant and she’d like for John to be there when she did. They had done a lot of operations together, but John’s current assignment was one in which she couldn’t participate, and the long separation was grating on both of them. Add that to the ticking of Niema’s biological clock, and Frank rather thought that John would finally be turning over his spurs to someone else.

Someone like Lucas Swain, perhaps, though Swain had spent a long time in the field, too, and his temperament was totally different from John’s. John was patience itself; Swain was the type who would prod a tiger with a stick, just to get some action going. John had trained from the time he was eighteen-in truth, even before that-to become as superlative at his job as he was. They needed someone young to replace him, someone who could stand up under the rigorous physical and mental discipline. Swain was a genius at getting results-though he usually got those results in surprising ways-but he was thirty-nine, not nineteen.

Raiser trotted up to the back door, his tail wagging. Frank let the dog in and gave him another treat, then poured himself a cup of coffee and carried it into his library, where he sat down and began catching up on the news of the day. By that time his morning papers had been delivered and he read them while he sat at the table eating a bowl of cereal-he could manage that without Bridget’s aid-and drinking more coffee. Breakfast was followed by a shower and shave, and at seven-thirty on the dot he was heading out the door just as his driver pulled to the curb.

Frank had resisted being driven for a long time, preferring to take the wheel himself. But D.C. traffic was a nightmare, and driving tied up time he could devote to work, so he’d finally given in. His driver, Keenan, had been his regular driver for six years now, and they’d settled into a comfortable routine, like an old married couple. Frank rode up front-it made him nauseous to sit in back and read-but other than greeting each other, they never talked during the morning commute. The afternoon drive was different; that was when Frank had found out Keenan had six kids, that his wife, Trisha, was a concert pianist, and that his youngest child’s cooking experiment had almost burned down the house. With Keenan, Frank could talk about Dodie, about the good times they’d had together, and what it was like growing up before the advent of television.

“Morning, Mr. Vinay,” Reenan said, waiting until Frank was buckled in before pulling smoothly away from the curb.

“Good morning,” Frank absently replied, already absorbed in the report he was reading.

He glanced up occasionally, a precaution against getting carsick, but for the most part he was oblivious of the thick traffic as people in the hundreds of thousands poured into the capital for the day’s work.

They were in an intersection, in the right lane of two turn lanes making a left turn on a green arrow, hemmed in by vehicles directly ahead, behind, and to the left, when a screech of brakes to his right made him lift his head and search out the sound. Frank saw a white-paneled florist delivery truck barreling through the intersection, ignoring the double lanes of traffic turning left, with the flashing lights of a police car directly behind him. The grill of the truck loomed in his vision, heading directly toward him. He heard Reenan say, “Shit!” as he fought the wheel to angle the car to the left, into the line of traffic beside them. Then there was a bone-jarring crash, as if he’d been picked up and flung to the ground by a giant, his entire body assaulted all at once.

Reenan regained consciousness with the taste of blood in his mouth. Smoke seemed to fill the car, and what looked like an enormous condom spilled profanely from the steering wheel. There was a buzzing in his head, and every movement was such an effort that he couldn’t lift his head off his chest. He stared at the huge condom, wondering what in hell it was doing there. An irritating blare was sounding in his left ear, making his head feel as if it might explode, and there was some other noise that sounded like shouting.

For what seemed like forever Reenan stared blankly at the steering-wheel condom, though it was only a few moments. Awareness seeped back into him, and he realized that the condom was an air bag and the “smoke” was powder from the bag.

With an almost audible pop, reality snapped back into place.

The car was in the middle of a tangle of metal. To his left were two other cars, steam rising from the broken radiator of one. A panel truck of some kind was squashed against the right side. He remembered trying to turn the car so they wouldn’t be T-boned, then an impact harder than anything he’d ever imagined. The truck had been aimed right at Mr. Vinay’s passenger door-

Oh, my God.

“Mr. Vinay,” he croaked, the sound nothing like his own voice. He turned his head and stared at the director of operations. The entire right side of the car was smashed in, and Mr. Vinay lay in an impossible tangle of metal, seat, and man.

Someone finally silenced the maddening car horn, and in the sudden relative quiet he could hear a distant siren.

“Help!” he yelled, though again it was nothing more than a croak. He spat blood out of his mouth, drew a deep breath that hurt like hell, and tried again. “Help!”

“Just hold on, buddy,” someone called. A uniformed officer climbed over the hood of one of the vehicles on the left, but the two were so crunched together that he couldn’t get between them. Instead he got on his hands and knees on the hood and peered at Reenan’s face. “Help’s on the way, buddy. Are you hurt bad?”

“I need a phone,” Keenan gasped, realizing the cop couldn’t see their license plates. His cell phone was somewhere in the wreckage.

“Don’t worry about making any calls-”

“I need a damn phone!” Keenan repeated, his tone fierce.

He fought for another breath. CIA people never identified themselves as working for the CIA, but this was an emergency. “The man beside me is the director of operations-”

He didn’t need to say more. The cop had worked in the capitol area a long time, and he didn’t ask, “What kind of operations?” Instead he whipped out his radio and barked a few terse words into it, then turned around and yelled, “Anyone have a cell phone?”

Silly question. Everyone did. In just a moment the cop was stretching out on the hood to hand Keenan a tiny flip-phone. Reenan reached out a shaky, bloodstained hand and took the phone. He punched in a few numbers, realized this wasn’t a secure phone, then mentally said, “Shit,” and punched the rest of them.

“Sir,” he said, fighting back the black edges of unconsciousness. He still had a job to do. “This is Keenan. The director and I have been in an accident and the director is severely injured. We’re at…” His voice trailed off. He had no idea where they were. He held the phone out to the cop. “Tell him where we are,” he said, and closed his eyes.

Even though her regular contacts were out of the question, over the years Lily had met a number of people of questionable character with unquestionable skills who, for the right amount of money, would dig up dirt on their mothers. She still had some money left but not a huge amount, so she hoped that “right” translated to “reasonable.”

If Swain checked out okay, that would help her financial situation, because he’d volunteered to work with her. If she had to hire someone, that would put a serious dent in her bank account. Of course, she had to remember that Swain had admitted he wasn’t an expert at security systems, but he said that he knew people who were. The big question was, would those people want to be paid? If they did, then she’d be better off hiring someone from the beginning, rather than wasting money having Swain investigated.

Unfortunately, that was something she wouldn’t know until it was too late to do anything about it. She wanted Swain to check out okay. She wanted to find out he hadn’t escaped from a psychiatric ward somewhere or, even more important, he hadn’t been hired by the CIA.

It was as she was going to an Internet cafe that she realized she’d made a tactical error in walking away from Swain the day before. If the CIA
had
hired him, Swain had now had the opportunity to call and have his file sanitized to fit whatever story he told. No matter what she or anyone else was able to find out about him, she couldn’t be certain the information was correct.

She stopped dead in her tracks. A woman bumped into her from behind and gave her a nasty look for stopping so abruptly.
“Excusez-moi,”
Lily said, detouring to a small bench so she could sit while she thought this out.

Damn it, there was so much about spy craft that she didn’t know; she was at a huge disadvantage here. There was now no point in investigating Swain; he either was or wasn’t CIA. She simply had to make up her mind to contact him or not.

The safest thing to do was not call him. He didn’t know where she lived, didn’t know what name she was using. But if he was CIA, then he had somehow figured out that she’d be after the Nervi laboratory complex and he had staked it out, waiting for her to appear. Either she abandoned her plan completely, or he’d eventually find her there again.

As far as the laboratory went, the circumstances there had become enormously complicated. Rodrigo had obviously found out who she really was and somehow gotten a photo of her sans disguise, otherwise the soccer players wouldn’t have recognized her so readily. The little fracas at the park would put him on double alert, and security at the complex had undoubtedly been doubled.